MSNBC host Chris Matthews says he wasn't talking about Republicans in general, only a few at a Tampa restaurant when he posed the question last week, “What’s this, a douchebag convention?”

According to a story on The Hill website, Matthews got into a confrontation at the restaurant when he threw out the remark after he said a group of delegates were "hooting and hollering" at him.

The Hill said Matthews emailed this statement to them on Friday afternoon explaining his remark:

“I was talking to this 2 a.m. get-together of loud-talking people who
had been heckling me from inside a restaurant and were now huddled
together around a table. It was that get-together, right there in front
of me; that was the ‘convention’ I was towel-snapping about. When The
Hill called me and suggested I might have been referring to the
Republican National Convention I couldn’t believe it. That’s wrong.”

The story of Matthews' confrontation comes on the heels of a blowup on "Morning Joe" with Republican National Committee
Chairman Reince Priebus last week where Matthews referred to Priebus comments as "your garbage," and Priebus called Matthews "unhinged."

Matthews also put colleague Andrea Mitchell in an unenviable spot during the convention, according to Politico, when he asked her to concede that his statements on Republican voter suppression
efforts were actually facts. Mitchell declined, saying "... not our opinions."